


Lyra's Uncle

by thelivingbird



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Asriel makes the people who care about him tired and annoyed but still they care, Gen, Her actual uncle this time though, Pre-Canon, Siblings, for the sake of this fic there is no La Belle Sauvage, one mildly gross description of a dead body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22529038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelivingbird/pseuds/thelivingbird
Summary: Erik Belacqua happily lives in his older brother's shadow. When that brother decides to blow up his life by having an illegitimate child with a married woman, it is Erik that has to take on the responsible role.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Lyra's Uncle

No one cared when young Erik Belacqua renounced his title and stepped away from his illustrious family as a teenager. What was there to mind considering the family’s future was now held in the hands of the young charming albeit intense Lord Asriel Belacqua. Erik never minded being in his older brother’s shadow. It made it all the easier to slip away into a quiet job working as some journalist’s assistant. A quiet job that Erik quickly turned into the first rung of a ladder which he ascended at a breakneck pace until he owned part of the only left leaning newspaper being printed in London in just a handful of years. Not that any of the Belacquas were impressed. Asriel was the explorer, hardly present, ever mysterious. A romantic vision in his absence. Erik was a calming constant.

The company he kept was a tight circle of like-minded individuals, many of whom were colleagues. Erik spent most of his days fretting over the final edition of each paper, and if he had energy drinking with the writers only to pass out early and start the routine again. It was a pattern he was sure would eventually lead to political upheaval.

“Spill as much ink as you like, Erik, the Magisterium will still beat you with a better version at every turn.”

“The truth wins out.”

“You don’t sell any papers because you don’t print any of the gossip. The more interesting story is what wins. You’d be wise to learn that.”

As much as it made Erik’s blood boil to watch Asriel smugly pay the check before leaving, he kept these words in mind. He just didn’t think he may have to apply their logic so soon.

Not that the Belacqua brothers were ever particularly consistent with their communication, but the silence from Asriel was alarming. It lasted four months and then Edward Coulter was shot. The competing papers blew up the images of the blood-stained Lord holding a little baby girl. It was good for sales, but Erik refused to allow it on his own pages.

Everything is clearer in retrospect. Looking back, Erik realized the sudden decrease in his brother’s journeys north and a sudden increase in social presence. Erik was more concerned about getting new investors to keep his paper afloat and swallowing his pride and asking his brother for money was the last thing he wanted to do. If he was paying any attention, he would have noticed the women’s perfume in his brother’s bathroom or the cross necklace left on the counter.

It all felt so inevitable. Asriel took what he wanted and expected to side step the consequences. Even in the midst of the trial, he seemed immune to stress.

“I was defending Lyra.”

“Yes, Lyra. Your daughter. The bastard child of a known heretic and a married woman.”

“Widowed,” Asriel smirked.

Erik could feel a headache coming on. “They absolutely can and will come after you. Can’t you just frown and sigh. Pretend you’re sorry. I don’t think the unapologetic tone you’re taking about your affair with the Coulter woman is doing you any favors. Take the embarrassment now and save yourself in the future.”

“I won’t give them that. I suppose you want me to sigh about how I was blinded by love and lost myself in the sin.”

“It’s more sympathetic. People like romance. What’s she saying?”

Asriel grit his teeth, “Don’t you read your competitors? It certainly isn’t a love story.”

“Maybe I can get her to say something different.”

“You don’t know her,” Asriel shook his head.

“Well, she liked you. I’ll seem positively delightful in comparison.”

Erik stepped into the large flat. Marisa Coulter was collecting stray pieces of paper on the table, brushing crumbs off the seats, and smoothing her hair. Her robe was filthy. He wondered how many days she had been wearing it. This was the woman his older brother had thrown away his fortune for. He couldn’t help but be taken by surprise. Even now, the stories written about this woman also made painstaking effort to detail her beauty and charm. One paper even wrote it was as if she was “lit from within.” The woman before him looked hollow.

“I wasn’t expecting a guest.” Her eye line couldn’t seem to settle. She was examining her own space as if it was the first time she had seen it. As if she hadn’t been stuck in it for the past several weeks.

“I didn’t think you’d let me up when you heard my name.” Erik’s badger daemon hid behind his legs. The golden monkey watched them intensely. He was stretched lazily along the floor, but his eyes were alight with something much more lively and dark.

Marisa rubbed the back of her neck, “You’re the only paper in London not running the story, no?”

“Well…”

“Ah, I’ve been naïve it seems,” she slumped into her seat, “At least there’s no cameras.”

Erik kept his hands clasped firmly in front of him as he took a seat, double checking for any food waste that his host might not have caught.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she was already going. “He seduced me. It was a moment of weakness. I love Edward. Please bring him justice… You know you can just copy the others. At least they had the courtesy to ask questions via letters.”

“You know that’s not what I’m interested in.”

“No,” Marisa smiled, “No, you’re here to help your brother. Give him some good press. Do you have a bribe for me? Are you going to tell him what you’ve seen?”

“Does that interest you?”

“No.”

He didn’t want to begin this meeting putting on the pressure. “How much damage could it cause you? The affair is a fact. Unless you’re going for a case of mistaken identity. All I’m asking for is one word in his favor. You know I’ve spoken with him. I know how it started between you two and how long the affair _really_ went on.”

“And go against everything else I’ve said?”

“They’ll call you soon enough. You’ll have to leave your tower and answer whatever they like.”

Erik saw the corner of the woman’s mouth twitch, but she didn’t speak. Instead she glanced around the room with a glimmer of something in her eyes. He didn’t have to hear it to know that she was laughing at him. That sort of smugness can be palpable in the air. Erik was grateful his brother met this woman already married. What a pain the two of them would have been during the holidays. 

“You’ve barely spoken about your daughter,” Erik saw her wince at the last word, “Give me a quote telling me about Asriel’s joy at finding out he was going to be a father. How you saw how protective and loving he was in those last few months.” 

“This is for Lyra?”

“Why else would I make the effort to come here if not for family?” 

Marisa looked him up and down, considering the man before her. She turned her attention to her daemon who had pulled himself up on the arm rest of her chair. The silence lasted for so long, for a moment, Erik thought that the woman had forgotten he was there.

“You’ve spoken to them, haven’t you?”

“Who? I’m only here to help my brother get his child back.”

“That’s not Asriel,” she spoke as if she knew him so much better, “He knows. Of course, he does. And now he’s sending his little brother to take care of it for him.”

“I just want my niece to have a home,” Erik interrupted. He became tense with the possibility that he had just begun to make things much more difficult for his brother. “Despite the ill will between you now, surely you can appreciate that. We’re not asking anything from you. Stay away, if you like, just let Asriel have his daughter back.”

Marisa Coulter stood and sneered at Erik. It was the most alive she had looked since he arrived in this flat. “He’d like that, for me to stay away. Now he has you wrapped up in the story of a heartbroken father. You don’t even understand the game he is really playing. I’ll give you a new quote for your paper. Write this: Marisa Coulter is locked away in her tower preparing rooms and games for the baby. She is sick with guilt from what she has done, but only hopes that she can repent by loving this child and making an angel from sin.”

Erik stopped her in her paces to come face to face with her, “This isn’t a game, Marisa.”

“You haven’t earned the right to call me that.” She still put in the effort to wear perfume. Odd.

“I won’t print it.”

“Fine. I’ve managed to keep some friends in high places. Tell your brother, if he wants the girl, he better swallow his pride and learn to pray.”

“Honestly, Erik, I have no idea what she is talking about,” Asriel lounged in his seat.

Erik rolled up the latest copy of his paper. He had gone ahead and printed an opinion piece in favor of Asriel and put it on the front page. Without any new information, quotes, and with the bias stinking up any possibly valid points, it accomplished nothing. He smacked Asriel on the side of the head with it.

“And you’re just sitting here as if it will all turn out alright. You will lose her and everything else they can take from you.”

Asriel grabbed the paper and threw it into the fire, “You’re the one who went and had to piss her off.”

“We know now that the Magisterium is interested in Lyra, but why?”

“They hate me, Erik.”

“Not everything is just about you, Asriel. She doesn’t believe you could possibly be interested in taking in your daughter without any personal gain. There’s something else going on. What will happen if we don’t get her back?”

Asriel’s calm mood turned for the worse in a moment. Stelmaria growled at his side. “That is not an option.”

It wasn’t something he could put off any longer. The secondhand embarrassment was almost too much to bear, but Erik wanted to try to be supportive. He was also concerned that it hurt Asriel to not be seen with any relatives behind him. Most of the proceedings felt like a lecture rather than an assessment of evidence. Erik watched the muscles on his brother’s neck tense even as he feigned disinterest.

Only when they called him forward for questioning did Asriel register any sign of life other than himself. As he moved, Erik caught a whiff of the perfume he smelled when he visisted Mrs. Coulter’s flat. When was the last time his brother washed his suit?

“Lord Asriel,” it began.

In the beginning, it wasn’t anything that Erik or anyone else hadn’t read in the papers or heard in social circles. It wasn’t until they got to the details of involving Lyra that the drone tone of questioning took a livelier and more threatening beat.

“When did Mrs. Coulter inform you that you were the father of her child?”

“Two months into her pregnancy.”

“And how did you react?”

“With concern.”

“Yet, you started to conspire.”

“I began to develop a plan to protect Mrs. Coulter and the child should either of them require it, yes.”

“Leading to the murder of Edward Coulter.”

“It wasn’t premeditated.”

“Then how exactly did you plan to address the husband of the mother of your child.”

“I didn’t. I planned to simply keep my daughter hidden from him.”

“But you failed. And then turned to violence.”

“Violence only because Mr. Coulter intended to harm my family. As I said earlier, it was never my intention to harm him.”

“You coveted another man’s wife and a man has a right to defend his marriage.”

“You reference the right Mr. Coulter had in attacking _me_ because of the affair, yes, but what about the child? A child that I provided for, cared for, and did everything I could to prepare a full life for. I wonder how the public could find a father raising his daughter so disagreeable,” Asriel’s voice shook.

It was a remarkable exercise in control on Asriel’s part. Not that it looked that way to anyone else. Erik knew his brother’s temper well. A pang of fear struck him. His brother was trying, but it would never be enough. The questions became repetitive with Asriel continuing his short and clipped answers. The crowd was reading him as disingenuous rather than despondent.

The chair Erik was sitting on could only be designed for a very specific person with horrible taste. The seat was slanted at an awkward angle and the back was just low enough that it was offering more discomfort than support. The legs were so high that Erik’s feet were barely touching the ground. He had been here for nearly an hour. A subtle method of torture.

The man who entered the room had a hummingbird for a daemon. She buzzed around his head taking only short breaks to rest on the man’s shoulder. Before he spoke, he fidgeted with his glasses trying to read the papers in front of him in the dim light.

“Mr. Belacqua. I understand you are here regarding a matter of the recent press surrounding Lord Asriel. This is your fourth time you’ve met with us about your paper, is that correct?”

“No,” Erik groaned, “No, I’m here to discuss my niece. I understand the Magisterium has taken an interest in the baby, even though I struggle to imagine why. Her mother remains secluded at home, while her father is currently fighting in the courts. I would like to discuss the child’s future before things get more sensationalized than they already have.”

“Oh,” the man went through his papers again, “I see. Well, as I far as I am aware, the Magisterium isn’t in favor of awarding custody to either Lord Asriel or Mrs. Coulter.”

“Then where will the baby go?”

“I’m not privy to any of that information, Sir.”

“Then find out for me and come back. Or send me someone who knows. Regardless how you all feel about the circumstances of that girl’s birth, she has living family members who have the means to provide for a child. There is no legal reason you have to put her in the care of strangers.”

“The Magisterium will never condone giving custody of the child to a criminal.”

“Then give custody to me. I’m a blood relative with no criminal record.”

“This case isn’t that simple.”

“Enlighten me and maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

“You did what?!” Asriel was pressing his hands against the doorway. He looked like he wanted to break something, but with most of Asriel’s things already taken from him the only option was Erik’s neck.

He took a step back, “You’ll be able to see her whenever you like.”

“At _your_ home. If they don’t move you straight to Geneva. And if I don’t interrupt this schedule of tutors and mentors coming to poison her mind day in and day out. Maybe they’ll even have the nurse poison her. They’ll start having her analyzed. _My_ daughter to be raised into another mindless follower… this is all to spite me. Maybe this was even _her_ idea.”

“You’ve lost everything, Asriel. They’ve taken it all away and I’ve saved this for you. I’m taking on the responsibility of raising your daughter, and all you can do is stomp around the room like a child.”

“You agreed to let the Magisterium have full access to our lives. They will twist us inside out until the Belacquas are _nothing_ in this country.”

Erik’s face was going red. The absolute ingratitude his brother had, after all he had done for him. He could’ve ignored the entire situation and let his brother burn himself to the ground for everyone’s entertainment. “I bought you time. Time to come up with whatever scheme you’re surely already planning. She will be protected by me until you can take her back. The Magisterium pays me no mind, you know this is the safest place she can be for now.”

“Because you’re a coward. Always have been and still are.”

Erik slapped his older brother across the face. They both took a step back startled by the outburst. Erik rubbed his own cheek as his eyes fell to the floor. His daemon was ahead of him, leaving as quickly as possible. At the doorway, he took a moment to stop. To remember what this was all for. “I’m set to meet Lyra tomorrow. If you’d like to see her, just-“

“Send word to the Father Macphail so he can put it on the record,” Asriel glared at his brother, “Right?”

Erik pressed his lips into a fine line. There were things his brother didn’t know, couldn’t know, yet. Asriel would understand in time.

She seemed so small. This little thing that all the fuss was about. Lyra squirmed in Erik’s arms. He thought she looked frightened. Her daemon was shaking as he tried to hide himself in her blankets. How many arms had she been passed through these past few months? Erik became decidedly nervous over whether or not he had prepared an acceptable room for his niece.

Even walking out of the building, he realized he neglected to bring an umbrella for the oncoming storm. The baby started to cry at the first few raindrops that hit her head. This would surely be a common occurrence that Erik would have to become used to. He wondered which temperament, that of her mother of father’s, Erik feared Lyra growing into most. Would he have her long enough to see. When would the Magisterium decide that the deal was not satisfactory, as they inevitably would? A decade? Five years? One? Erik could only hope that his brother’s anger was enough fuel to inspire him with one last brilliant scheme.

“Shh, it’s alright,” Erik tried to warm her from the cold. Asriel hadn’t come to see her. Still stewing. Or perhaps bracing his own home for the storm. Erik couldn’t help but notice the small leak that had developed in the corner of his living room.

He knew what he would find in the dark and muddy waters. The day Asriel found Lyra screaming in her crib, floating along what was once a busy thoroughfare. In that moment, there was a little time left for anything but seizing the opportunity. He grabbed his daughter and brought her straight to Jordan.

It wasn’t until after he left Lyra in the arms of the Master that he could return to his brother’s house and wade through the debris to find the body. Erik was floating head down in the makeshift nursery he prepared. Asriel had to mind the glass as he pulled his brother’s body through the broken window and out into the sun. It felt as if his weight doubled as he attempted to push him onto the boat.

The sunlight revealed the horrible disfiguration the bloating had caused. The skin was blue and grey. Asriel would’ve thought he grabbed the wrong man had it not been for the address.

In reflex, or perhaps delusion, Asriel checked for a pulse knowing full well his brother had been left like this for hours with no daemon at his side. It was a miracle he was able to retrieve Lyra. He knew the best he could hope for was a body to give a proper burial to. Asriel chastised himself for hoping. For the audacity to bet against the odds. As the sorrow seaped through his skin, Asriel let himself pretend that one day he was going to tell his brother what he meant to him. He would tell him how he admired his ability to breathe freely. To love simply.

Sorrow turned to anger as Asriel noticed the broken chain around his brother’s ankle. It was worse considering Asriel had to wait for the city to clear before he could put his brother to rest. The ground was soft and the dirt stuck to Asriel’s hand as he threw the first pound of earth onto the coffin.


End file.
